👋 Hey there,
Why v1 Is Never the Problem
Let me tell you something most developers don’t realize until it’s too late:
It’s not v1 that kills your system, it’s v2, v3, and v4 colliding with assumptions you didn’t know you made.
When you’re in the thick of delivery, the focus is on getting things working. But as an architect, your lens has to widen. You’re not just building features, you’re building the ability to change.
And that shift? It’s not just technical. It’s mental.
🧭 The Mindset Shift
From: “How do we build this?”
To: “How do we change this later?”
This is one of the quietest, but most powerful transformations in architectural thinking.
It’s the difference between designing for today’s clarity and designing for tomorrow’s chaos.
Let’s break it down:
Developers typically optimize for correctness, performance, or elegance now.
Architects optimize for changeability, adaptability, and resilience later.
That doesn’t mean over-engineering or abstracting everything.
It means recognizing which parts of your system are likely to change, and shaping your design to absorb that change with minimal pain.
🧰 Tool: The Volatility Mapping Worksheet
When I coach engineers stepping into architecture roles, I give them this exercise early:
Volatility Mapping — A method to anticipate where change will happen before it hits you in prod.
Here's how it works:
Step 1: Identify key modules or components in your system.
Think APIs, services, workflows, data schemas, and interfaces.
Step 2: Ask two questions for each:
🔄 How often will this change? (frequently / occasionally / rarely)
💥 What happens when it changes? (isolated / ripple effect / catastrophic)
Step 3: Classify each component into one of these categories:
Category | Action to Take |
|---|---|
Volatile + High Impact | Isolate it behind a stable interface |
Volatile + Low Impact | Accept the churn, keep it flexible |
Stable + High Impact | Guard it with tests + contracts |
Stable + Low Impact | Optimize for performance/simplicity |
This gives you a heat map, not of risk, but of change potential.
And that’s gold for an architect.
📔 Example: The Search Filter Trap
Let’s say your team is building a product catalog with a search filter system.
The v1 temptation:
Hardcode filters into the frontend with some URL query parsing logic. Fast, simple, dev-complete.
But what’s next?
Business wants dynamic filters by category
Marketing wants tracking per filter usage
Product asks for saved filters per user
Design requests grouped filter UIs
Now you’re retrofitting APIs, rewriting query logic, and adding caching, all on top of brittle assumptions.
Why? Because you built for now, not for change.
With volatility mapping, you’d flag filters as:
✅ Likely to change often
✅ Impact multiple system layers
→ So you'd intentionally design them as a separate concern with clean interfaces.
That’s the difference architecture makes.
🏗 Design Principles to Pair With Volatility Mapping
Use these 3 architectural habits to reinforce your design-for-change mindset:
1. Design Stable Interfaces Around Volatile Logic
If something’s going to churn, wrap it. Keep the interface constant even as the implementation evolves.
2. Prefer Inversion Over Embedding
Let high-volatility components be plugged in, not baked in. Think plugin patterns, strategy objects, configuration > code.
3. Sketch the Change, Not Just the State
Instead of drawing boxes for what the system is, try drawing arrows for how it will change. What’s optional? What might get replaced? Who owns each part?
💡 Architecture == Designing for Evolution
Let’s put this bluntly:
Your system’s current shape matters far less than its ability to evolve without a rewrite.
As an architect, your job isn’t to future-proof every line of code.
It’s to make change safe and cheap in the places where it’s inevitable.
That means knowing:
What’s likely to change
Who will be affected
How to isolate, document, and communicate it
In other words, designing for change is designing for people.
✅ Action Step: Map Your Next Change
This week, take a system you’re working on and ask:
What’s most likely to change in the next 6 months?
What parts are hardest to change today?
Pick one volatile area and sketch:
What interface wraps it?
What assumptions are baked in?
What would make future changes less painful?
This small habit builds long-term thinking. And that’s your job now.
🎯 Want More Tools Like This?
I break down these exact principles in the 5-day crash course, with:
How to frame real system problems like an architect, not just code features
The mindset shift from “solutions” to strategic tradeoffs
A fast, practical way to design systems with clarity
How to communicate your architecture decisions with confidence
The tools to lead technical decisions, even without a title
It’s free, and it’s where most readers of this newsletter level up first.
👉 Start the 5-Day Architecture Crash Course »
👋 Wrapping Up
Great architects don’t design for today.
They design for what’s likely to change tomorrow.
Use volatility mapping.
Design safe boundaries.
And help your team evolve with confidence.
Thanks for reading.
See you next week,
Bogdan Colța
Tech Architect Insights